Gender and Justice in America

No country incarcerates more women than the United States. Although American women comprise just five percent of the total global female population, we represent nearly a third of the world’s female prisoners. In addition, the number of girls in youth facilities continues to rise even as male populations shrink, and increasing numbers of girls and women with children enter the civil immigration detention system. However, due to the size and scope of the male prison population in the age of mass incarceration, the unique challenges these women and girls face when they become involved in justice systems are often overlooked. Through the Gender & Justice in America blog series, Vera will explore issues facing justice-involved women and girls in the fields of adult corrections, youth justice, immigration, victimization, substance use, and mental health.

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Sarah Zarba

When I was 13 years old, skipping school and breaking curfew were two behaviors that I engaged in often.
If anyone would have asked me why I was skipping school and staying out late, I would have told them that I’d been running away from home after arguments ...

Kristi Riley

When the Bureau of Justice Statistics released the most recent trends on jails in the United States, they confirmed two things: First, the push for local justice reform is still strong. The number of people held in jail decreased from 785,500 people in 2008 do...

Shannon Scully

Leah Hairston

Every April, tribute is paid to survivors of sexual violence through educational and awareness-raising events across the country.
To that end, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM) campaign for 2017 seeks to shin...

Kaitlin Kall

Even with a dramatic decline in the number of people incarcerated at Rikers Island, about 600 women are in jail each day – many of whom have been there before. The time for establishing better alternatives that can disrupt the cycle of jail and trauma for wome...

Erika Turner

Women and girls are too often invisible in talks of criminal justice and reform.
Although they comprise a minority of people who are incarcerated in the United States, they are a fast growing population, with unique entry points into the system. They also pre...

Sarah Zarba

Former President Obama commuted the sentences of more people in one year than any other president in our nation’s history.
The total number of clemencies—including pardons and sentence commutations granted? 1,715. The number of women granted clemency? 106. ...

Kristi DiLallo

In her new play on the school-to-prison pipeline, Notes from the Field, actress and playwright Anna Deveare Smith reenacts interviews with 17 people from the education and criminal justice systems. The school-to-prison pipeline is a national trend in which chi...

Taylar Nuevelle

We like to think incarcerated women are so different from the general population. But that’s simply not true. I often say: If you want to understand sexism in America, go to a women’s prison.
Gender bias for incarcerated women is the same bias that forces free...

Charmaine Davis

9to5, National Association of Working Women—of which I am the Georgia chapter director—understands the devastating impact mass incarceration has on women. The rate of growth for female imprisonment has outpaced men by more than 50 percent between 1980 and 201...

Evan Zavidow

While recent police brutality headlines have motivated movements like #BlackLivesMatter and #SayHerName, activism surrounding transgender people has been pushed to the margins in mainstream media. In response to police violence against transgender people, #Bl...

Juhu Thukral

Americans are currently in a self-reflective mood: Primary voting turnout for the 2016 Presidential election has so far been extremely robust, with no hint of slowing down—a sure sign people are invested in who we are and where we are going as a country. Relat...

Chelsea Davis

It’s no coincidence that the number of Americans with college diplomas is the same as those with criminal records—the relationship between a lack of education and criminal justice involvement, especially for girls and women, is bi-directional, complex, and pro...

Lindsay Rosenthal

Since the early 90s, research has shown that girls in the juvenile justice system are more likely than their male peers to be detained for status offenses and minor delinquent behavior. The findings of a recent study by researchers at the University of Texas p...

Ruth Delaney

A new report from the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and Research Action Design lays bare the significant impact that mass male incarceration has on women who remain in the community—a critically important and often overlooked aspect of our current offende...

Lindsay Rosenthal

When faced with the reality of the justice system’s impact on girls and the lack of reform efforts directed at girls’ unique pathways into the juvenile justice system, Russell Simmons—a longtime advocate for justice reform—acknowledged that he had not been pay...

Laura Macomber

People visit the Mecklenberg-Western Pomerania region of northeastern Germany to see its sparkling lakes, sweeping fields, and charming coastal towns that flood with tourists in the summer. Most people do not go there to visit the incarcerated youth at its juv...

Chelsea Davis

In the last 10 years, heroin use among women has doubled, yet few drug treatment programs consider women’s unique needs and current punitive drug policies disproportionately entangle women of color and economically disadvantaged women in cycles of arrest, inca...

Tess Domb Sadof

When mothers who act as primary caregivers serve time in prison, the loss of emotional and tangible support they provide—in the form of regular caretaking, income, housing, and more—can have a traumatic and disruptive impact on their families and communities. ...

After decades of mass incarceration, policymakers around the country are realizing the unintended consequences of using the criminal justice system to deal with the social and public health problems of homelessness, drug use, mental illness, and poverty. Despi...

No country incarcerates more women than the United States. Although American women comprise just five percent of the total global female population, we represent nearly a third of the world’s female prisoners—a rate that outstrips even America’s unprecedented ...

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